This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Solitude has soft, silky hands, but with strong fingers it grasps the heart and makes it ache with sorrow. Solitude is the ally of sorrow as well as a companion of spiritual exaltation.
When either your joy or your sorrow become great the world becomes small.
Happiness is salutary for the body, but it is sorrow that develops spiritual strength.
There is a burden of care in getting riches, fear in keeping them, temptation in using them, guilt in abusing them, sorrow in losing them, and a burden of account at last to be given up concerning them.
Care | Fear | Guilt | Riches | Sorrow | Temptation | Temptation |
To know the needs of men and to bear the burden of their sorrow - is the true love of men.
The worst of men is he whose tongue is mightier than his mind.
There is something more awful in happiness than in sorrow - the alter being earthly and finite, the former composed of the substance and texture of eternity, so that spirits still embodied may well tremble at it.
We would not be human if we did not miss loved ones; but in feeling lonesome for them we don’t want selfish attachment to be the cause of keeping them earthbound. Extreme sorrow prevents a departed soul from going ahead toward greater peace and freedom.
A wound from a tongue is worse than a wound from a sword; for the latter affects only the body, the former the spirit.
When the eyes say one thing, and the tongue another, a practiced man relies on the language of the first.
The Word of God is not a sounding but a piercing Word, not pronounceable by the tongue but efficacious in the mind, not sensible to the ear but fascinating to the affection. His face is not an object possessing beauty of form but rather it is the source of all beauty and all form. It is not visible to the bodily eyes, but rejoices the eyes of the heart. And it is pleasing not because of the harmony of its color but by reason of the ardor of the love it excites.
Beauty | God | Harmony | Heart | Love | Mind | Object | Reason | Beauty | God |
The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.